Posts

Vaulting the Language Barrier

/in , /by

Who are you talking to when you talk about your business? If you’re only creating materials in English, the answer is “not as many as you could be.”

Whether it’s customers, material suppliers or potential partners, looking beyond the English-language market can make sense for all sorts of businesses. These days the fastest-growing markets for many U.S. companies—whether they’re making smartphone apps or specialized machine parts—are in China, India and other developing countries. And even if you’re only working close to home, there’s a good chance there’s a potential market in local immigrant communities.

The problem, of course, is that language really can be a barrier. That’s where Translation Cloud comes in. It’s a service that can translate websites, documents and legal papers quickly and reliably. It can even localize software and video games. You just use the company’s website to upload your document, and they send the translated version right to your email.

That means you can explain the nuances of your business on a Chinese-language website, create a version of your new video game to sell in South Korea or include a version of your product instructions in flawless Spanish.

Translation Cloud works with companies ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies and provides translation into more than 50 languages. And because it operates online, you can work with the company from wherever in the world you are.

All of which means, there’s no reason you can’t be talking to a lot more people about your company than you are right now.

Business in a Global World: A New Start-Up that Helps You Translate your Website

/in , /by

When it comes to the Internet, there are a lot of negatives.  From bullying to hiding drug money, the Internet has opened avenues that would have otherwise been closed in the corporeal.  However, for all its faults, the Internet has brought the World closer together.  People in one nation can see the thoughts of people from another.  For what it’s worth, it’s probable that the Arab Spring would not have started were it not of the Internet.  There is still one barrier that hasn’t been broken by the digital revolution, language.  Although, medicine and coding use English as its lingua franca the ability to get intentions across is still curtailed by the lack of understanding.

Translation is laborious task.  It’s not just getting the words right, as I said before, intention and nuance of meaning is equally if not more important.  That’s where the company Smartling hopes to step in.  The company has a new Translation Management System, sort of like a Content Management System like WordPress which many of us familiar with.  This system makes it easier for translators to see in context changes to the webpage.

There’s also Cloudwords which uses a combination of professionals, crowd sourcing, and machine translations.  It’s quicker because it focuses more on getting the words correct.  While, Smartling does not have a proprietary machine translation, it instead uses an integrated form of Google Translate.

So would your business benefit by having it presented in another language.  You should talk to your IT professionals to see where your traffic is coming from and decide for yourself.